Supreme Court hears conversion therapy case

Now, the state of Colorado opposes this stance, writing, in part, that the First Amendment, quote, "allows states to reasonably regulate professional conduct to protect patients from substandard treatment, even when that regulation incidentally burdens speech." CBS News Politics Reporter Melissa Quinn joins us now. Melissa, thanks so much for being with us here. What happened in court today? So so much of the discussion before the Supreme Court today focused on exactly what Colorado is regulating with this law. Is it regulating speech, which is what Kaley Chiles and her attorneys argue, or is it regulating professional conduct, which is what the state of Colorado and the lower courts have found? Now, some of the justices were certainly sympathetic to Kaley Chiles's position here. At one point, Justice Samuel Alito said that it looks like Colorado is engaging in blatant viewpoint discrimination, and Justice Neil Gorsuch called Colorado's interpretation of the law peculiar. But it's also possible that the Court could actually send this case back to the lower courts to take another look at the law, which is something that was suggested by Justice Amy Coney Barrett at one point and also Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. So we brought up how the First Amendment is being invoked in all of this. What makes this one a free-speech case? So Kaley Chiles is arguing that Colorado's law censors her conversations with minor clients on issues like gender identity and sexuality. So she says, for example, that if she wanted to engage in talk therapy with a young patient in which they sought to align their gender identity with their biological sex, that would not be allowed under Colorado's law. But if she wanted to have a conversation that did the inverse of that-- so if she wanted to engage in talk therapy with a minor patient in which they were supportive of gender transition-- she says that is allowed under Colorado's law. So Kaley Chiles is arguing here that Colorado's ban censors her speech not only based on the content of her discussions but as well as viewpoint. Colorado, though, one of more than 20 states that do ban conversion therapy for minors. Could the ruling here set a precedent in other states? So Kaley Chiles is actually not asking the Supreme Court to strike down Colorado's ban in its entirety. All that she is saying is that this should not apply to licensed counselors who want to engage in talk therapy specifically. So if she prevails here-- and it certainly seems like some of the justices were sympathetic to her case-- this would just mean that Colorado could not enforce its law as it relates to these licensed counselors engaging in that form of therapy, and it's likely that we could see exactly that happen in the other states with similar laws on the books where this just could not be enforced as it relates to talk therapy specifically. Melissa Quinn, thank you very much.